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N.F.L.-Ready Rookie Class Is Set to Rewrite Record Book

When Russell Wilson was a student at North Carolina State and Wisconsin, he routinely packed 18 credits into a semester, graduating in three years, then going to graduate school. He did this while also starting 50 consecutive football games and playing baseball well enough to be drafted by the Colorado Rockies and play in the minor leagues during summer breaks.

It was a schedule that might have exhausted most midcareer professionals. For Wilson, it was merely good training.

“At N.C. State and Wisconsin, both run pro-style organizations, and it was a blessing for me,” Wilson said in a telephone interview last week. “It really helps you transition because you have to learn to keep organized and keep your priorities.”

It is little surprise, then, that Wilson, now the starting quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks, said that nothing about his rookie N.F.L. season had overwhelmed him: not the workload or the news media demands, not playing in front of packed stadiums or learning the playbook. In his first 10 games, Wilson has thrown 15 touchdown passes, putting him on pace to challenge Peyton Manning’s rookie record of 26, one of 19 single-season rookie records that could fall at the hands of this class of first-year players. The rookie learning curve, only recently so steep that the newest professional players routinely spent a season on the bench, has been flattened. The result: this is the N.F.L.’s year of the rookie.

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, rookies have started a total of 498 games in 2012, the most through the 10th week of any season since the league went to 32 teams in 2002. Only eight years ago, rookies had started 100 fewer games at this point. Rookie quarterbacks — Wilson, Andrew Luck, Ryan Tannehill, Robert Griffin III and Brandon Weeden — had 21 victories through Week 10, virtually assuring that they will shatter the N.F.L. season record of 23.

“Every now and then, you get a group of guys in the same class — quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, whatever it is — and things just seem to click with those guys,” Griffin said on a conference call last week. “We’re definitely, as a group, just clicking right now.”

All those fresh faces signal not so much a lack of N.F.L. patience — although coaches under searing job pressure often cannot afford to wait for young players to develop — as it does a revolution in how players are prepared long before they get to their first minicamp. The players the N.F.L. gets now are in better shape, understand more of the sport’s complexities and have more experience dealing with the external duties of their job than those coming out of college just a few years ago, coaches and talent evaluators say.

Seven-on-seven leagues and tournaments have made football a year-round sport for high schoolers across the nation, giving them a head start on the pass-dominated game that has swept colleges so completely that Alabama Coach Nick Saban recently lamented the popularity of no-huddle offenses. Once players arrive at a major college program, they are often greeted by a nutritionist who might take them grocery shopping and sit with them at every meal — an innovation Texas Coach Mack Brown said major programs began to adopt about five years ago — to ensure they eat well, even when they go home during the off-season. Individualized strength training programs designed for their position are also a norm.

“Strength programs that at one time colleges thought were really good, now are so much better,” said Gil Brandt, who has been assessing college players since he was a personnel executive for the Dallas Cowboys beginning in the 1960s. “We used to get kids that would come in, they thought they were strong. They came in and they were weak. Veterans just ran over them. When you saw the player come to camp in his second year, you didn’t realize it was the same player.”

Because of scholarship limitations, Brown said, college coaches run their practices more like the N.F.L.’s, heavy on mental preparation, while taking care to preserve players’ bodies for games. At those practices, the players are schooled in offenses and defenses that, more than ever, mirror those played in the N.F.L. Luck played in a pro-style offense at Stanford; Wilson played in a West Coast offense at N.C. State and then in a vertical one with Wisconsin. Tannehill ran almost exactly the same no-huddle offense at Texas A&M that is being used in Miami. Tampa Bay running back Doug Martin, who is on pace to approach Eric Dickerson’s record for rookie yards from scrimmage, said preparation was emphasized at Boise State.

The practices do not benefit only the quarterbacks. The linemen are more adept in pass protection, and defenders learn how to better cover receivers. Saban runs the Alabama program much like an N.F.L. team, with a complex defense and an attention to detail that the Tampa Bay rookie safety Mark Barron, who played for Saban, finds similar to the way Greg Schiano runs the Buccaneers.

“I was used to a heavy workload,” Barron said. “If you’re not used to things like that, if you’re not prepared, you might feel like it’s too much. I’m used to preparing for big games and preparing in detail.”

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Brown said: “You’re doing drills with your guys that will be used at the combine. One of the recruiting pitches is we practice like the N.F.L., we prepare you for the draft, we want to win our ballgames, we’re putting you in position to go to the N.F.L.”

Last month, the Indianapolis Colts’ interim head coach, Bruce Arians, said that he had never been around so many rookies — the Colts regularly start three, including Luck. The Colts’ 6-3 start might be the biggest surprise in the league, in large part because the Colts were thought to be rebuilding — their owner, Jim Irsay, said as much — when they rid their roster of many veterans after releasing Manning. But Luck has woven an almost seamless transition, leaning on a veteran like receiver Reggie Wayne while acclimating himself and putting together perhaps the best rookie year of all, putting the Colts in position for a wild-card spot. Against the Dolphins, Luck passed for 433 yards, the most by a rookie in a game. Through Week 10, Luck, Griffin, Weeden and Tannehill combined for nine individual 300-yard passing games, already the most by rookie quarterbacks in any N.F.L. season. Luck has four, tying him with Manning for the most by a rookie.

Even by the current standards of rookies, Luck was unusually well prepared for the N.F.L. His father, Oliver, was also an N.F.L. quarterback and was later a league executive. His former head coach Jim Harbaugh was a former N.F.L. quarterback and is now the San Francisco 49ers’ head coach. Both offered Luck insight into what to expect, but Luck also says that his time at Stanford smoothed his way.

“It helped, especially my senior year, having gone to the Heisman ceremony twice, having to do a couple more interviews a week, seeing your face on the tube,” he said in an interview.

“It helped understanding that aspect of what it’s like to be an N.F.L. quarterback, and to be on a successful team.”

Luck played at Stanford for three seasons, staying an extra year after he could have left for the N.F.L. But as more players exit for the draft long before graduation, the N.F.L. might receive an extra, unexpected bonus. College coaches feel the pressure to play their top recruits earlier, thus giving them even more experience.

“Fans have less patience, so just like the N.F.L. needs to bring somebody in, and they’re not looking at three or four years, we’re playing a lot of freshmen because when we sign somebody we look to see if they can help us right away because we also see a higher number of guys leave early,” Brown said. “We redshirted Earl Thomas, and he played two years and left. We redshirted Jermichael Finley. He played two years and left. They might have played as true freshmen and helped us.”

Now, it is the N.F.L. getting all the help from those recently out of college.

“Now the only ones that sit on the bench,” Brandt said, “are the ones we missed on.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 18, 2012, on Page SP1 of the New York edition with the headline: N.F.L.-Ready Rookie Class Is Set to Rewrite Record Book. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe